A meeting of the Basildon Parochial Church Council, 8th May 1936

Mr P. Hope raised the question of Church cleaning and complained that the work at Lower Basildon was very unsatisfactory. [...]         Mrs Banks was proposed as the new cleaner... subject to her willingness to undertake the duties at the existing rate of pay.

Thus the cleaning of St Bartholomew's Church at Lower Basildon was now under the direction of my great-grandmother. Her name was put forward by her brother-in-law Percy, a long-standing member of the Parochial Church Council (PCC). Her sister-in-law Doris was the church organist, and her son-in-law Reg was sidesman at St. Stephen's Church in the neighbouring village of Upper Basildon and the youngest member of the Basildon PCC before he was shot down in the skies over Italy in September 1944.

Notwithstanding her family's connection to church administration, Mrs D. A. Banks, known as Agnes, was baptised in the font as a baby. She married there in 1917 and she would later come to rest in the churchyard. It can be assumed she approved of her brother-in-law's suggestion as she duly accepted the promotion, having already been cleaner of the church under the direction of another woman for three years.

Born in Upper Basildon, educated at the village school and now living just a stone's throw from the Church, in 1936 Agnes was a forty-five year old mother of three teenage children. Her husband Jack was a basket maker, working from the osier beds that lined the southern bank of the Thames at Lower Basildon. Her three children would marry in due course and produce several grandchildren, all of whom lived locally.

The next mention of Agnes in the PCC Minutes comes eighteen years later on 23rd September 1954:

The resignation of Mrs D. A. Banks ... from the cleanership of the Parish Church, was noted + the council resolved to make her a presentation of Two Guineas in recognition of her 21 years service.

It is likely that her resignation from the post coincided with her husband's retirement and their subsequent move to Walliscote, just across the river at Whitchurch-on-Thames, where Agnes had been a kitchen-maid as a teenager. Eighteen months later, she returned to St Bartholomew's for the final time, joining generations of ancestors when she was laid to rest in the churchyard.

How to capture in words the importance of this church my family's story? The ivory keys of its imposing organ were once deftly played by a great-great aunt; a great-great uncle was a bellringer; the names of three great-great uncles appear on the Roll of Honour; dozens of family christenings, weddings and funeral services have been held within its walls; its graveyard is littered with the tombs of my ancestors.

Yet, I prefer to admire its handsome tiled floor, the dark-wood pews decorated with brass candelabras and think of my great-grandmother mopping the floor, polishing the brass and dusting the organ with meticulous pride. If ever there was a Banks family church, this must surely be it.